"A little reminder
to those intent on signing up for the fall session of the Cicely continuing
ed program, the deadline is this Friday. Let's see what's new this
quarter: Lou Volpee will be teaching a course on practical rural law. Topics
include Road Kill: Whose Moose Is It and the always controversial rightof way, Sno Go Versus
Dogsled."
- Chris on the air

"I said some pretty
rough stuff to you... are you telling me you don't remember?""I just decided to
forget the whole thing ever happened Fleischman. What else was I
going to do? I'm tired of being hurt. I'm tired of being mad
at you Fleischman. It seems that's all we ever do. So, forgetting
seemed like my best option."
- Joel apologizes to Maggie

5.2

"The feeling of a good
mystery, it just swoops you up..."
- Maggie, on her interest in Nancy Drew

"There is no mystery,
at least not the kind you want. In real life there are no fogbound
moors or clues on matchbooks or fifth columnists waiting to be unmasked.
it would be nice if there were, because then there would be solutions to
things in life, but it doesn't always work that way. Everyone likes
a good detective story. I went through my Hammett phase in college.
I think the attraction is, in life ourmysteries aren't exciting.
You know? They're just intractable and depressing and enervating.
Like, why do we always hurt the ones we love. Where does the money
go? Why can't the Russians find a way to govern themselves and let
the rest of us off of this perpetual, gnawing anxiety...in a detective
story, at least the universe makes sense. It was him. He did
it. The natural order is disturbed, but the beauty of it is that
it's restored again."
- Joel to Maggie

5.4

"Oh God. Oh my
God. I'm sitting here eating seeds and having a serious conversation
about winter clothing. First my wallet and now this. What is
happening?"
- Joel, fearing he is on losing his "New York"-ness

"You notice anything
different about me lately...any behavioral patterns, any discernible break
with traditions, deviations from the norm, recent trends?""You serious? Well,
I don't know. Now that you mention it, it you do seem more
relaxed lately. I just saw you laugh out loud the other night with
Holling.""Well, maybe.
He happened to be telling a very funny story.""You're more involved.
Town meeting last month, you SAT there. I remember registering that.
Of course, you left after 15 minutes.""You're right, you're
absolutely right. It's as bad as I thought."
- Joel questions Maggie

"To the human eye,
all herring gulls look alike. The male herring gull, however, will
allow none on his territory but his mate, and he will recognize her coming
50 yards away in a crowded colony of thousands." Point being nature
lovers, that even a lowly sea bird can distinguish individual members of
its own species.
- Chris

"I have never seen
Bernard as a threat, Holling. Up until now this whole doppleganger
thing has been kind of a gash, you know, two sides of the same coin, yin
and yang, Calvin and Hobbes deal. Now it's like something out of
an Edgar Allan Poe thing. We're rivals, two halves of a divided self."
- Chris

"This is not homesickness.
This is more than homesickness. I'm facing serious personality meltdown.
Joel Fleischman, the Jewish doctor from New York. You take that away
and who am I? What am I?""Well, Fleischman,
just forgetting a few subway stops...""This is just the
tip of the iceberg. Don't you understand? It's like 'Invasion
of the Body Snatchers.' I'm being replaced by some insidious replicant,
a Joel Fleischman look-alike that talks about crop rotation and carburators.
I've got to stop it before it's too late."
- Joel to Maggie

5.5

"Why is it people assume
I'm available for every ludicrous stunt in town? Because I don't have a
boyfriend? Because I'm not married? Because I don't have kids?
What, what, what? They think just because I don't have a man in my
life, I'm lonely?""I guess."
- Maggie to Shelly, after being asked to be Homecoming queen

5.6

"You think a man is
a man cause he wears team colors and guzzles beer in front of the tube?
Can't you see, boys, the sands of time are dribbling through the hourglass?"
- Holling, making his feeling about sport known

5.7

"I'll admit I have
some vague obligation to fulfill my position as a doctor in this town,
but my scholarship didn't say anything about putting out fires. Believe
me, it was the one thing that was not in the small print."
- Joel, refusing to signup for the fire department

"You're not a team
player.""I am a private person.
New Yorkers are like that. It comes from living in an overpopulated,
crime-infested island. We like our space."
- Maggie & Joel

"The path to our destination
is not always a straight one, Ed. We go down the wrong road, we get
lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark
on. Maybe what matters is that we embark."
- Leonard to Ed

5.10

"Excuse me for inquiring
Dr. Fleischman, but you must have some patients who are very close to the
end. You don't have to give me names, just the count.""I can't believe that
you would ask me that. I'm a physician, not a mortician.
I find this conversation not only in poor taste, I find it offensive
and morbid."
- Holling and Joel, pondering how many graves to dig

"You know, Owen, I
am responsible to see that we get enough holes in the ground come winter.
No disrespect, but is there any chance you might be needing one?""No, Dr. Fleischman
said it was just indigestion. Too many of those chili dogs late at
night.""I see.""But, thanks for thinking
of me."
- Holling & Owen

"Let me tell you something,
Marilyn. Death is the enemy. I spent 10 years of my life singlemindedly
studying, practicing, fighting hand to hand in close quarters to defeat
the enemy, to send him back bloodied and humble and I am not going to roll
over and surrender. This woman is not ready for the grim reaper."
- Joel to Marilyn, about Nedra Larkin

"Good Lord, Joel, you're
only a doctor. Do you reproach yourself when winter comes, when the
grass dies, and the leaves fall from the trees. Nedra died because
it was her time, and she died well. She died with all her wits about
her, with her loved ones by her side. She said all her goodbyes.
You and Ishould only be so
fortunate, Joel."
- Ruth Anne to Joel

5.11

"It's funny, to me,
the way people refer to childbirth as a miraculous event. A miracle is
something that defies nature. Only, childbirth has got to be the
most natural thing in the world. Top three anyway. But, on
the other hand, when you thing about it, there's really no other word that
fits. Sperm. Egg. A coincidental meshing of genetic information that will
grow something that could write an opera or cook up some Napalm.
It blows my mind."
- Chris

"I'm not mad at you
Fleischman. I know, in your artless, flat-footed sort of way you
were trying to be kind.""Thanks. I was."
- Maggie & Joel

"It's just human.
We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants and needs
and desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about
it, we're all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies.
it's like a kind of poetry."
- Ruth Anne to Maurice

"I feel like I can
handle a lot of things. I can handle a parasitic infection and separating
lesions, arterial sclerosis. But this stuff... I just want to go
through life thinking people are happy, naive as that may sound."
- Joel, not cut out to be a counsellor

5.13

"Dust mites. Oh, god,
they live everywhere. Clothes, drapes, lint in your belly button.
Not any more. Kind of makes you think.""What do you mean?
About what?""About your cabin,
about the unseen civilizations, about the parallel universe. Don't you
wonder what you wasted in there? Moms, Dads, universities, shopping
malls."Oh Chris, they're
just bugs.""Yeah, but who knows
what kind of socio-cultural structure they've cooked up in this microscopic
melting pot.""Universities?"
- Chris ponders Maggie's dehumidifier

5.14

"Threats of imminent
danger are just his way of saying 'Good Morning'."
- Joel, describing Adam to Maurice

5.15

"My masculinity isn't
hinged on whether or not I knit."

- Joel to Maggie, on Marilyn's invitation to knitting class

"The wine passes muster,
does it?""Well, we tend to
look to Australia for surfing pants, AC/DC videos and a SEATO partner.
Cabernet Sauvignon we like to leave to civilization."
- Joel to Adam at his dinner party

Why don't you think
of the words of Tom Paine, who said, Man did not enter this society to
be worse off than he was before, or to have fewer rights than he had before,
but to have those rights better secured. When it comes to the right
of the mind, he never surrenders it. The mind, that wonderful breeding
ground of contradictory impulses like love and hate and rage and empathy.
They've all been invited to the party, so you might as well make room forthem.
- Chris

5.21

"I'm sorry. Here
you are being sweet and affectionate. Everything I've always wanted
and it's making me sick. Fleischman, this won't work. We've
got to go back to the way things were: hostile and bitter and petty."
- Maggie to Joel, on why she is sick